The tsenna was best fitted for men without any other armor, when combating in open countries or carrying on sieges. Shields were hung upon the battlements of walls, and, as still occurs, chiefly above gates of cities by the watch and ward. In time of peace they were covered to preserve them from the sun, and in war uncov ered; this sign was poetically used to denote com ing hostilities, as in Is. xxii :6, etc.
(2) Helmet. The helmet was next in consid eration, and in the earliest ages was made of osier, or rushes, in the form of a beehive. or of a skull cap. The skins of the heads of animals— of lions, bears, wild boars, bulls and horses— were likewise adopted, and were adorned with rows of teeth, manes and bristles. Wood, linen cloth in many folds, and a kind of felt, were also in early use, and helmets of these materials may be observed worn by the nations of Asia at war with the conqueror kings of Egypt, even before the departure of Israel. At that time also these kings had helmets of metal, or rounded or pointed forms, adorned with a figure of the serpent Kneph.
The nations of Asia, however, used the woolen or braided caps, still retained, and now called kannk and fez, around which the turban is usu ally wound. These were almost invariably silo plied with long lappets to cover the cars and dn. back of the head, and princes usually wore a radiated crown on the summit. This was the form of the Syrian, and probably of the Assyrian helmets, excepting that the last mentioned were of brass, though they still retained the low cylin drical shape. The koba, some helmet of this kind, was worn by the trained infantry, who were spearmen among the Hebrews, but archers and clingers had round skullcaps of skins, gelts or quilted stuffs, such as are still in use among the Arabs. The form of Greek and Roman helmets, both of leather and of brass, is well known; they were most likely adopted also by the Hebrews and Egyptians during their subjection to those nations (3) Body Armor. The most ancient Persian idols are clad in shagged skins, such as the .Egis of Jupiter and Minerva may have been, the type being taken from a Cyremean or African legend. In Egypt cuirasses were manufactured of leather, of brass and of a succession of iron hoops, chiefly covering the abdomen and the shoulders, but a more ancient national form was a kind of thorax tippet, shereyon, or square, with an opening in it for the head, the four points covering the breast, back and both upper arms. This kind
in particular was affected by the royal band of relatives who surrounded the Pharaoh.
By their use of metal for defensive armor, the Ca rians appear to have created astonishment among the Egyptians, and therefore may be pre sumed to have been the first nation so protected in western Asia; nevertheless, in the tombs of the kings near Thebes, a tigulated hauberk is represented, composed of small three-colored pieces of metal—one golden, the others reddish and green. This kind of armor may be meaht by the word teehera, the closest interpretation of which appears to be decussatio, tigulatlo, a til ing. The expression in 2 Chron. xviii :33, may be that Ahab was struck in one of the grooves or slits in the squares of his techera, or between two of them, where they do not overlap, or per haps, with more probability, between the metal hoops of the trunk of the shereyon, where the thorax overlaps the abdomen. The term kas kasi;n, 'scales,' in the case of Goliath's armor, denotes the squamous kind, most likely that in which the pieces were sewed upon a cloth and not hinged to each other, as in the techera. It was the defensive armor of northern and eastern nations, the Persian Cataphracti, Parthians and Sarmatians. But of true annular or ringed mail we doubt if there is any positive evidence, ex cepting where rings were sewn separately upon cloth, anterior to the sculpture at Takt-i-Boostan, or the close of the Parthian era. The existence of mail is often incorrectly inferred from our translators using the word wherever flexible ar mor is to be mentioned. The techera could not well be worn without an undergarment of some density to resist the friction of metal, and this may have been a kind of sagum, the shereyon of the Hebrews, under another form—the dress Saul put upon David before he assumed the breastplate and girdle.